Who's Next?
by TheShoelessOne
Summary: I hope it's not often I have to clean up your messes, Sayid.' Future Ben and Sayid


**Who's Next**

For a moment, the sound of rain plinking off the corrugated roof metamorphosed into the soft patter of water on wide green leaves, tall grass swaying at his knees and water and mud soaking up into his shoes. Then, everything returned to the dead sound of rain on metal, sloshing through gutters to the soggy ground outside. Even before his eyes ticked open, he recognized where he was. He could smell the peroxide, feel the rough, cold exam table under him, hear the tinny tinkle of familiar silver instruments far in the other room. One of the safe houses.

He didn't dare move. The last hours--how long?--were empty and black; he'd have them back sooner or later, they always came back. The taste of metal in his mouth was blood, but not enough to shock him. It seemed a more common occurrence in the passing months. He would wait until the footsteps echoing in the other room reappeared, as they always had. Wait until he reeled the cart in with its instruments and fixed what needed fixing.

Sayid was always in need of fixing.

"Look who's joined the living," Ben's voice followed his body into the room, pulling the wheeled cart in after him. The left right wheel had a wiggle to it, something that ground into Sayid's shoulder. He winced and growled. There it was. He didn't have to move to feel the slug in his left shoulder, lodged somewhere between his neck and his clavicle and burning like a hot dagger.

"What happened?" He still hadn't opened his eyes. His own voice sounded thick, unreal.

"Sit up," Ben replied instead, his voice terse. When the order wasn't immediately obeyed, he followed it up with, "It's not going to kill you."

Sayid opened his eyes at last, groaning as he shifted his weight up onto his right elbow. He had a makeshift bandage stiffed against his wound. "_What_ happened?"

The room came into focus around him; first the lone lamp swung around to shine into the space between them, then Mister Linus himself. Everything else was dim, a hazy shadow that only blurred further when he squinted. Ben's sharp features contracted in annoyance as he pulled his round glasses from a shirt pocket and pawed around for one of the instruments on the cart between them. Sayid sat up even further, resisting the urge to investigate his shoulder wound.

Ben slid his glasses onto his nose, lowering his gaze to stare across at Sayid with a too-familiar stare. "What, don't you remember?" His voice was dripping. He finally produced the long-nosed tweezers he'd been searching for and stared them down as he ran a sterilizing wipe over them. "I'm sorry if I sound sarcastic at all, Sayid, but I'm just a little bit upset."

Sayid was not one to keep his lips sealed, but as he opened his mouth to speak, Ben removed the bandage and pressed the tweezers into Sayid's gunshot wound with no warning. His reply was reduced to an incoherent growl between grinding teeth.

Ben tossed the bloody slug into an aluminum bowl, where it clattered several times before settling in the bottom. "The reason I have these safe houses," Ben began, his voice clipped as he wiped the blood from his tweezers, "is that they're _safe_. The point being that no one else knows where they are."

"I understand the point of a safe house," Sayid responded heavily, at last working his jaw to his liking.

"Apparently _not_," Ben spat, tossing the tweezers in the sink. They clattered several times before settling in the bottom. He squinted through his glasses at the man half-seated on the exam table, something that sent an inadvertent shock up Sayid's back. "I appreciate all the men that you're killing in your wife's name, Sayid, but when you drag that work back to one of my _safe_ houses, it sort of defeats the purpose, don't you think?"

A flash of grinding metal and fire spasmed through Sayid's mind.

"Whatever I did--"

"What you _did_?" Ben's voice turned up incredulously, squinting even more incomprehensibly at Sayid. "What you did caused me to compromise my location, _reveal_ myself to my enemy and take care of what _you_ couldn't finish." He shook his head and tossed a clean white cloth at Sayid. "Clean up. You're bleeding all over the place."

He turned, sifting again through the supplies on his cart. Sayid pressed the cloth to his shoulder. The blood seeped through.

He stared hard at the floor as Ben threaded the stitching needle through his flesh. He clearly remembered the man he had shot and killed--Ben's watch told him that it had been nearly six hours since he had caught the man at the warehouse. Gray hair, black suit, too well-dressed for the setting. Sayid had followed him for three days, back and forth from the warehouse to his high-rise apartment. Then he'd put a bullet in the man's neck.

He remembered pieces--a hidden gunman, a black car, fire and metal and the sound of gunshots fired over and over and over again.

"Where are we?" Sayid asked at last. "This isn't our rendezvous."

"You're right," Ben muttered, checking his stitching as he neared the end of the gunshot wound. "It isn't. Brilliant deduction." He tied the last stitch off in a thick knot and cut off the extra with a flourish. As he looked up at his patient, Sayid saw his own blood flecked on Ben's glasses. "We're in Las Vegas."

It sounded so final. Sayid's jaw fell a notch, and he found he couldn't correct it. "Las Vegas?"

Ben nodded, dipping a swab into peroxide and pressing it to Sayid's closed stitches to sterilize. "We made a bit of a mess of my safe house in Phoenix." He sounded conversational, casual. "I hope it's not often I have to clean up your messes, Sayid. I liked Phoenix."

Then, Sayid's memory cracked open like a fault line. The bullet in his shoulder from behind, someone with bad aim, luckily. Sayid's target had been prepared, the follower being followed. Sayid did what he could, but they'd followed in a large black car with the windows darkened. Sayid lost too much blood, swerved on the road winding to Ben's secluded desert bunker. His headlights caught in the corrugated aluminum siding, a flash of bright white light as he swerved to take out the corner of the black car, and then nothing.

Fire and metal, the side of the safe house caved in with the black car sticking half-in and half-out. The screams and pleas of five full-grown men as Benjamin Linus gunned them down one by one. Outlined in fire, eyes dead, long black gun loosing emptied shells into the desert night. Then, once the noise of the men had been silenced and the only sound was the crackling of fire, Ben looked down.

Those eyes died a long time ago. Emotionless, tired, cold. They narrowed at the man lying bloody and prostrate in the desert gravel. Ben holstered the gun in the waistband of his pants and there dusted off his hands.

"Don't bring your work home with you, Sayid," he said coldly, and his breath misted in the air before him. He remembered no more.

"It was a mistake."

Ben looked up from across the room as Sayid spoke, then turned off the tap he had been running his hands under.

"I would be concerned if you'd run your car into my safe house on purpose," Ben responded, toweling his hands. The blood was still flecked on his glasses.

"It won't happen again," Sayid cut in, harsh and dark. His curls hung into his eyes, which had turned fiery. "I was careless. I admit to this." Ben made no response, staring levelly. "Did any of them escape?"

Then, Ben's lips turned up in a smirk and he shook his head almost jovially. "Just who do you think I am, Sayid?"

He fought the chill that formed in the small of his back. This was a smart man. This was a cold man. This was a deadly man. Sayid knew which side of Ben Linus he wanted to be on because Sayid knew exactly what kind of man Ben Linus was.

He cradled his wounded shoulder as he stood off of the exam table. He caught his lost breath and set his back in a straight line. His words came out hard and breathless:

"Who's next?"

* * *

AN: Hmmm... Not sure exactly how I got the idea for this one, but in all truth it ended up differently than I'd planned. I like this one better. Decided I'd look at a different side of Ben than I usually write. How does it sound? Is it still Ben-ish? Sure, the title is kinda lame but I couldn't find anything better. Oh, and give me the word on Sayid. IMO, not enough fic involves Sayid, and I'd hate for what little I have of him here to be OOC. So yeah! Let me know what you think, leave us some love, and most definitely STAY AWESOME!!


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